The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

Huber grinned, then sobered again. It was easy—and satisfying— to mock cowardly politicians, but in fairness they weren’t people who’d signed on for armed conflict. You could be brave enough in the ordinary sense and still not want to enter a building surrounded by tanks and professional killers.

“The only people in the gallery …” Orichos continued. “Will be the goons, the so-called Volunteers, who you saw enter with Grayle and her Freedom Party colleagues. Those few are just bodyguards, but there’d have been hundreds packing the seats if it weren’t for your arrival.”

A porch of the same hard black stone as the plinth loomed above them. Just inside the doorway stood a man and a woman in embroidered tunics, presumably the ushers.

A mural on the wall of the semi-circular anteroom depicted an idealized Moss ranger on the right and an equally heroic female mechanic on the left. Stairs slanted upward from either side.

“We’ll wait here,” Orichos said curtly to the male usher. He and his colleague looked doubtful, but they didn’t argue. Huber’s big powergun drew their quick glances the way the view of a nude woman might have tempted a modest man, but they said nothing about the weapon.

Huber stood beside the jamb and looked through the inner doorway. Save for the anteroom, the ground floor of the Assembly Building was given over to a single chamber paneled in carved wood. Desks in ranks curved around three sides, each row rising above the one before it. It didn’t look to Huber as though half of the places were occupied, but presumably enough assemblymen for the purpose were present.

The entrance was on the fourth side. Facing the desks to the right of the doorway was a railed enclosure with seats for a dozen members; all but one of them were filled. To the left was a raised lectern at which an old man in a black robe was saying, “By virtue of the powers granted me as Speaker, I have called this extraordinary session….”

Orichos leaned close to Huber. “The cabinet,” she whispered, nodding toward the enclosure.

The ordinary assemblymen sitting in the arcs of desks were staring at Huber and Orichos instead of watching the Speaker. Even some of the cabinet members stole furtive glances over their shoulders, though they faced front quickly when they caught Huber’s eye.

Melinda Grayle and her two companions were almost alone on the Speaker’s side of the room. The men appeared ill at ease, but Grayle’s expression was sneeringly dismissive as she eyed the doorway.

Huber couldn’t see the gallery from where he stood; that meant it must be directly overhead. The Volunteers’d be staring at his back if he went to the podium with Orichos. Staring at, and maybe aiming …

Well, Huber hadn’t joined the Slammers because he was looking for a risk-free life. He grinned; but he also latched his clamshell again.

The Speaker continued reading from a lighted screen set into the lectern before him. He stumbled frequently over the words. This may have been the first time he’d had occasion to invoke these emergency powers, and he was probably just as nervous as most of the assemblymen.

“I’d think some of the public would want to watch,” Huber said into Captain Orichos’ ear. “Is everybody in the Point afraid of his shadow?”

Orichos looked at him sharply. “Of course not!” she said. “The proceedings are broadcast to the whole country by satellite! The gallery only holds a few hundred people; it’d be full normally, but by citizens indulging their whim rather than because they needed to be present to know what the Assembly was doing. Half the population lives in individual households scattered throughout the forest anyway.”

Huber nodded, his eyes on the Assembly beyond. He hadn’t meant to step on the woman’s toes, but he should’ve known his comment would do just that. He must be nervous too.

“Therefore …” the Speaker said, his voice gaining new life as he reached the end of the set formula; the constitutions of most colonies had been drafted by settlers with little education but a fierce desire to make things “sound right” by using high-flown language. “Invoking the special powers granted the Speaker in the present emergency, I hereby call Captain Mauricia Orichos of the Gendarmery to address the Assembly.”

Melinda Riker Grayle rose to her feet. “I protest!” she said. She filled the hall as effectively with her unamplified voice as the Speaker had moments before using a concealed public address system. “This is a business for the citizens of the Point, not for the self-serving bureaucracy which rigged the last—”

Speaker Nestilrode stabbed a control on the lectern with his bony index finger.

“—elec—” Grayle said. Her voice cut off abruptly; her lips continued to move. The Assembly Building had a very sophisticated audio system. The Speaker had clamped a sonic distorter around Grayle, not for privacy as it’d be used in an office but to shut her up.